The extraction
by Hursklip K Juno
Summary: An alternate timeline with characters and factions of my own design, set during the Horus heresy. starts right before the burning of Prospero, where one of the main characters rescue the fleeing Remembrancers from the space wolves. contains characters from A Thousand Sons. Note: involving alternate timeline, minor spoilers and max Lore-bending/breaking.
1. Pre-sequence

The extraction

Pre-sequence

Prospero burned.

It once was the shining beacon of glory and hope, the truest aspiration of the imperium. And now it was a broken world, perished in the inferno of misplaced wrath. The failure of the crimson lord had resulted in the death of his people, the torching of his domain. His image shall be cast down as nothing more than a common bastard; and his legacy will be buried by the sands of time, never to be remembered, only cursed.

The imperium was split asunder, the stars themselves could not hope to outlive the cruel turmoil that raged amidst the dominion of the golden god; his favoured son, now blazing with hate and marred by treachery, along with the dark priesthood of mars had drowned the imperium in war. The galaxy of unity shall be toppled by once its most faithful servant; it seems that fate itself was not without its own sense of irony….

It was a time of great conflict, billions died, thrown into the meat grinder in the name of an uncaring lord; the laughter of the obscene and the twisted flooded the warp. Daemon hordes pulsed with an unholy glee and dined on the souls promised to them by the Warmaster, the storm of empyrean cut into real-space with such malice, as if a jagged blade had pierced the flesh of a new born, and leaving it with a pus filled black scar.

There will be no victor, only survivors. And as the light of reason died, so came the unending night; humanity once against forced into the long war. The hope of progress is lost, for there will be no forgiveness, only war.

But in the shadows, unseen forces move with serpentine nature, tilting the balance of the conflict. Unknown hands attempt to move the armies of both the emperor and Horus alike, each indulging in a chess game of galactic size; our world will die, reborn only to become the slave of a much darker regime, forever tortured by the whimsical wishes of the powers of ruin.

Prospero burned, the future of humanity burned with it; but all is not yet dust….


	2. Sequence I

Sequence I

"Centurion Gunther, this is hunter pack 6, we are at the lower levels near the loading bays, we have yet to identify any illicit material or any indication of Thousand Sons presence, it seems the witch-filth of Prospero didn't take part in any plans of escape."

Brother Oswain spat as he reported the findings of his pack to the elder wolves. Normally he'd be bursting with glee for a chance to kill the mutant spawn of Magnus, but instead of participating the glorious war to tear down the kingdom of the witch king, he is stuck on some lousy civilian vessel lead a bunch of pups with no self-control. Whatever this ship is hauling, it is a tragedy for any with a finely tuned sense of smell.

In his peripherals, a figure appeared, hunched over, limping and wrapped in grey rags.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

Oswain swooped around, aiming his bolter while the blood claws drew their chain-swords, ready to tear apart their prey when commanded. The figure paused, seems shaken by the presence of Astartes and turned slowly toward them.

"I I, m-milord, I am a thrall labourer, I j-just… I was moving some organics from the 3rd loading bay to the main storage, I don't know nothing, I swear."

Under the rags came a rasp and dry voice, its clarity further hampered by the panic of its master. It gestured the massive cart it was pushing, canisters of homogenised bio-material and diet supplement. Oswain was visibly annoyed at this turn of event, no traitors, just another bloody civvie that was distracting him from the line of duty.

"Go back to crew compartment. This is a military sweep and you must leave, unless you want your gut spread across the deck."

Oswain brushed off his rising temper, and bitterly addressed the indentured slave. In return the rag-draped thing quickly bowled and moved out of his way. Still grumbling, Oswain herded his charge onwards. Complete his duty, for the wolves will have no slackers in their midst.

Before he made his third pace, Oswain froze; a wave of relief flowed through him, and his breathe had eased, as if a weight was lifted off his chest. His mind scramble in order to comprehend his unnatural response. All the crew and labourers were rounded up ages ago, part of the initial boarding procedure; and the loading bays, they were empty. Now he knew why he was so startled by a mere mortal slave, there was a voice in the back of his voice, no, a thousand screams echoing in his subconscious; this was no slave, but an apex predator that the mightiest of Fenrisian wolves would flee from.

His muscle tensed, and he could hear his own twin hearts beating like pneumatic jacks, then he gathered any and all strength he could muster to face whatever may lay hidden in those damned rags. He turned slowly, as to not startle the cloaked thing and as he turned, so did the young'uns; inexperienced they may be, the gift of the great wolf had bestowed them greater extra-sensory gifts and every son of Lord Russ could draw upon them. The pack snapped around with ferocious strength and behind them the cloaked figure remained, limping no long and facing them.

Without any command, chainswords roared in their gauntlets, fangs bared, the loud clunk as explosive bolts were cycled into the chamber; and in return the stranger stood still, stayed silent.

"Show yourself, wrench! Or be blown to pieces!"

In an instance the cloak was shed, and under it was a power-armoured figure. Its mark was unlike any that Oswain had gazed upon. Its helm was smooth and featureless, its interleaved joint and angular case was a dark steel; a feint hexagonal patchwork etched on its surface, shimmering in the dim lights of the corridor. The armour was unadorned by any icon; unit markings or military designation save for its segmented pauldrons.

It was a gaping maw crushing a verdant world. Imprinted onto the plates in blood crimson.

It was a world eater, a maddened berserker of the XII-th legion, driven insane by their mutilated mind. In his grip a double bladed halberd, its blue power field hummed ominously in the cold air of the walkway. This man before them was undoubtedly an Astartes… albeit a rather short one.

As the wolves opened fire the Astarte also moved; it shifted with unnatural precision, so much so that the bolts impacted harmlessly on the surfaces. Within a moment he was among them, the halberd cleaving effortlessly into the ceramite; he attacked with surgical strikes and precognitive insight, parrying and deflecting so that the chainswords of the wolves were more or less hitting themselves. Furious sparks bounced from gauntlets and greaves, the peerless training of space marines seems but mere children's fooling as he systematically murdered them; first removed them of their weapons, then their limbs and finally a shadowy blow that sliced through the cranium. There was no war cry, the stereotypical fury of the XII-th legion all but absent from this scene of slaughter, he leapt and swirled amidst the wolves, and with every stroke falling more of them. In all but a moment there was silence, a lone black space marine stood in a pool of splattered gore and butchered carcasses, the image burnt into Oswain' s retina as he laid against the wall, his conscious mind fading as life bled from him.

"This is Val Sulaharr, I have infiltrated the Cypria Selene in stealth; ready to retrieve the relevant subjects."


	3. Sequence II

Sequence II

"Val, do you read me?"

A male voice buzzed through the Vox outlet.

"…yes"

"Good, you need to reach the third section behind the officer's quarters, the POIs are being held there; i think they ar_

Wait, I am seeing 4 shadows, the wolves know they are psykers, are you able to handle the planks?"

"Affirmative."

"Acknowledged, I will load a navigation cache into your armour, get to them before they are taken aboard the Hrafnkel.

Use your abilities to its full extent, we do not have much time."

The Vox call was cut short as the lone Astartes began to move, the holo-sight in his visor projecting markers lining up a pre-calculated route. The marine darted with eerie quietness. The stabilisers straining to balance the heavy armour as the noise dampener made the speeding Astartes all but inaudible, bursting through the bowels of the ship like a wraith. The optical refractive fields blurring his outline into a grey spectre.

Inside his helm Sulaharr was half-meditating, he regulated his organ so that they function in perfect synchrony; his breathe slowed as his quad-lungs oxygenated every last strand of his muscles. He was preparing, mentally steeling himself, the aura of a null is painful to those who are psychically-sensitive. Even with his psionic regulators the presence of blanks would greatly upset his abilities in combat.

As his muscle fibres contracted with a smooth rhythm, Sulaharr closed his eyes. The world around him was gone and the psychic image was all he had; colourless outlines defined by his otherworldly senses. Physical structures had a very subtle effect on the flows of psychic force, sometimes they made perception difficult, when all one could see is fractured reflections, but for the accomplished the unreal sight was a blessing in disguise. One could learn to perceive things beyond just the surface, one could see power flow and inherent instabilities. When such information was to be applied in the heat of battle; if one skilled warrior could strike at a hidden weakness at an unguarded moment, the result would be catastrophic.

Unfortunately, such ability also confers their own dangers, to exert focus under the influence of nulls was death to the psyker; but Sulaharr was not of the myriad cadre of imperial psykers, he just need to ensure he stick to the methods taught to him and not fuck up.

The outcome of this war might just depend on the safety of his target.

This is where the legacy of Prospero dies.

Thought Lemuel as held tightly to the old urn, his consciousness failing as his mind was crushed by the aura of the gilded swords-maiden. The dull agony of the Null-fields drenched him and Camille, a flash flood of lead and glass clashed in their heads; such was a pain that no mortal could remain sane from. He knew what the presence of the emperor's own meant; he had hoped Kallista's dying throes were some unfathomable hell born of the winds of the empyrean.

Yet in this waking nightmare he knew, the wolves had come, with hatred in hearts and wrath in their hands.

As Lemuel was dragged away in chains too heavy for him to move in, he wondered, how many more secrets were hidden in the veiled shadows of imperial politics, the truth of will of the emperor made manifest and if there were some obscure destiny they were always heading toward. This was proving too much for him, as the dim lights faded under the weight of null auras…

A massive tremor shook the walkway as a hatch was thrown open with feral strength, its panel buckling with the force of the impact. In a blur of shadows Val landed and balanced his stance, shifting into a defensive pose with his weapon. The 4 sisters stopped in their steps, intrigued in equal parts by the insolent fool who dared to obstruct the emperor's divine judgement and the fact he is a bit too short for his own good.

Wordless, the null maidens cast away their charge and executioner blades were unsheathed, great swords forged of hyper-tensile metal and Selenite alloys. The sisters charged, years of intensive coordinate fighting made them move as one, forming a tetrad net that ensnared Sulaharr; shearing strikes cut against him from every angle.

Val, no slouch in combat, countered with malevolent fluidity. Tilting his right hand to adjust the balance of his weapon, he turned on the spot, swinging the halberd in circular motion. With unstoppable force, the prodigious mass of metal clashed against the sisters' swords; the strike knocking each of them back. A sharp ringing echoed as the power field of Val's glaive produced incandescence with the momentum of his attack, masking the quiet howls as blades sliced through the air with immeasurable ferocity. A flurry of movement and the ear-splitting dirge occupy the officers' quarters, as the elite warriors of the imperium crossed paths in a merciless assault.

Sulaharr lashed out with massive strikes in decapitating motion, whilst hiding calculating thrusts in his ever-changing stance, and the sisters met out with their own adamantine defences and overlapping jousts quicker than the eye could follow; there would be no quarters, only death.

Val was losing. He had managed to knock out one of the null maidens, thinning out their ranks, but he could not hold on to his advantage. The grinding pain of their null aura was too much for him to bear; even as the cortical implants bled out a soothing wave his mind was shuddering. Pulverising tides threw him as his spirit essence was torn from him.

Val stumbled back and collapsed, have sustained several heavy blows from the sister only saved by his shield generator. He was panting, the holo-display warning him of imminent saturation as the 3 remaining swordswomen closed in on him, dishing out heavy strikes with each passing second. He will die here.

Focus,

A harsh whisper pulled him away from blacking out.

Complete your training.

So, he did.

The null maidens were surprised by the drift in the psychic winds, they stopped their final blow as they noticed that this dying witch was mustering his psychic strength. Their expression was pure scorn, as if one of them would almost let out a chuckle at the moronic decision of this wretched thing here. He would die screaming, they all thought.

They were nearly correct.

He overcharged his psionic regulators, the rift they generated disconnected his soul from his mortal meat. Using the resonance echoed by the rift he compressed the empyrean around him and projected his own soul into that roiling blackness of the pariah form. Such an act would have killed any psyker with horrific agony, but Sulaharr would not fall here. With his focus the amplified wave of warp-stuff formed into a vortex, dragging his soul through the realm of the unreal. He saw the screaming ghost of countless dead, the daemons, the melding of physical universe into the what the weak and the ignorant called gods; a dimension higher than our own. And as his spirit was forced into a breaking point, he also saw beyond that.

Shapes become colours and numbers become hardness and glittering lights, He saw truth. A true depth of the warp beyond even the will of the Octed; an infinity of black stars, their un-light reflecting an ocean of supreme stillness and tesseracting hurricanes; a towering plain where causality met possibility, where both gods and mortals are all paled by their own insignificance. And its powers surged into him.

With a burst of nothingness, Val opened his eyes.

And hell seeped through.

Shrouded by a dreaded tranquillity he reached out, gently pressing his armoured hands against one of the sister's blades. It shattered, its metallic form obliterated by impossible energies, scattering its shimmering remains like star dust. The sisters jolted, trying to pull back from him, but it was of no use. As Sulaharr rose from his slack pose dark lightning coiled upon his armour, projecting spatial waves that distorted light. A sister caught in the pulsating radiance was crushed, her own armour squeezing out her innards though her helmet grills like toothpaste; the mangled body sputtered grotesque crunch as her bones were flattened, and her twitching corpse fused into a gore-shaded metal disk.

There was a disturbing lack of sound in the scrambled chamber, the sisters simply stood like dumbfounded children. The absurd reality coursing through their previously impervious minds. It shook them.


	4. Sequence III

Sequence III

Lemuel was lifted from his oblivion, a ripple of energy had revitalised his mind; he had expected to have been landed in some dark room, bound and pumped full of whatever sludge his interrogator would have cooked up; he would have divulged everything he knew, and begged for a merciful death.

It was a surprise when images of the officer's quarters had make its way through his eyes; the dim lights and weathered panels, all seems so palatable. He nudged his body, fully expecting a mixture of aches and stiffness yet a calm warmth flowed in his veins. He tried to sit up, and failed when the weight of the cuffs and chains held him firmly on the ground. Small clinks startled him, breaking his moment of relief.

He saw the armoured Astarte, kneeing and cutting away at this infernal chain.

A sickly-sweet stench pushed its way into Lemuel's nostrils, pungent yet subtle in its scent. He turned to locate the source of this smell. He would come to regret his decision.

3 null maiden laying on the cold deck, unmoving and devoid of life; few meters away from them a depression was made in deck floor and within it a disk of meat and metal. he had killed the chosen of the emperor, Lemuel thought as cold sweat rolled down his cheeks. For someone to antagonise those who bore the Aquila mark was death, never mind killing personal guards of the emperor. Lemuel snapped back to the armoured soldier that was disposing their restraint, true fright wormed its way into his mind.

He could not see.

How could he not see? His gift might be suppressed in the presence of blanks, but now he couldn't read the Astarte's aura. Nothingness flowed around him, no signature, motionless and silent. He would have mistaken him for a statue. Finally, the warrior had torn away the last of the chains and stood up, he turns and walked towards him. Lemuel pulled back instinctively, coated in his sweat. The warrior paid no mind to Lemuel's trepidation, the giant gauntlets closed around his cuffs and snapped the link that subdued him. He dragged the former Remembrancer off the floor, stood him up before walking away to free the still bound Camille and Chaiya.

Nervously, Lemuel inched towards the armoured thing as he hacked into the chains around his companions. He seems alright, no intentions of harming anyone of the trio; for now, at least. Lemuel quietly pondered his future, staring at the slumbering Remembrancer and her lover. The chains were done away with, but Camille and Co. remain unconscious; the Astarte rocked them slightly, but to no avail. Finally, he placed his hands above their heads.

A pulse in the immaterium precipitated from the Astarte, and Lemuel was greeted with the same rejuvenating warmth; a gentle wave washed over his strained psyche, he felt relaxed despite the recent turn of events. Yet darker dread remained, a psyker had defeated blanks?! What ludicrous world is this? How could a psyker even find the strength in himself to harm the soulless?! Lemuel was stunned, he didn't even have the capability to ponder about why this Astarte was so short in stature.

The Astartes-esque thing had woken the sleeping duo and then pulled still dazed Remembrancer to her feet. He waited motionlessly as the 3 misfortunate souls hugged each other, Lemuel and Camille exchanging a few nervous glances as they wonder the path before them. The painful truth now clear in their minds, they were fugitives of the throne.

Lemuel and the two turned to face their odd saviour. Staring at his featureless helm not knowing what to say, an awkward silence was cast onto the chamber. It took a while, but finally the ice was broken with a monotonous Vox-call from the Astarte.

"Master Gaumon, Mistress Shivani and, umm, …"

"Chaiya, Chaiya Parvati. Milord."

"you all have been summoned, and the authority that I represent dictates that you all be extracted to answer for recent and possible future events."

Before the 3 confused companions could respond the Astarte walked into them; a scintillating light began to develop around Lemuel, Chaiya and Camille. It was bright, devoid of temperature and shattered the dimness of their surroundings. Gaumon was bewildered by the quietness of it all, how easily reality was rent. Within a split-second, all 4 were spirited away by teleportation.

It was so strange. How weird one might feel comfort at such an act.

Lemuel mused while in transit. The veil of physicality was pierced, them were at nowhere, in no-when; Suspended over a chasm of infinity with kaleidoscopic light flaring all around them. For a moment Lemuel felt cathartic, as if he held a world in his grasp, living a thousand futures whilst bearing insight from a million pasts. The sixth sense. What a gift from the gods. Then the lights dispersed, and here they were, standing on the Teleportarium; the feint tang of Ozone welcoming them back to the real.

Thud.

A sound splattered from behind them, the dull noise of a heavy object striking another. The Astarte collapsed face-first into the platform.


End file.
